If they had wanted to punish me, they should have kept me in a communal apartment. Then I would have become a… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
A man should know about himself two or three things: whether he is a coward; whether he is an honest man or… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Paperbacks of those we deem classics should be cheap and sold at supermarkets. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
What should I say about life? That it's long and abhors transparence. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
A writer should care about one thing - the language. To write well - that is his duty. That is his only… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Poems, novels - these things belong to the nation, to the culture and the people. They've been stolen from the people and… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Bookstores should be located not only on campuses or on main drags, but at the assembly plant's gates, also. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
What concerns me is that man, unable to articulate, to express himself adequately, reverts to action. Since the vocabulary of action is… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
As long as the state permits itself to interfere in the affairs of literature, literature has the right to interfere with the affairs of… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
For some odd reason, the expression 'death of a poet' always sounds somewhat more concrete than 'life of a poet.' — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
A poet is a combination of an instrument and a human being in one person, with the former gradually taking over the latter. The… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
On the whole, love comes with the speed of light; separation, with that of sound. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
“In the business of writing, what one accumulates is not experience but uncertainties.” — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
I haven't shifted language. I'm writing in English because I like it. I'm a sucker for the language, but the good old poems I'm… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Perhaps the best proof of the Almighty's existence is that we never know when we are to die. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
I grew up in the sort of cultural milieu that always regarded conversations about the political discourse as tremendously low-brow. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
“What gets left of a man amounts to a part. To his spoken part. To a part of speech” — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
“The instinctive preference was to read rather than to act. No wonder our actual lives were more or less a shambles” — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Americans have been tremendously fortunate in poetry, regarding both the quantity and quality of poetry produced. Unfortunately, it remains in schools and universities; it… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
